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// Bucking Apples 
// Story: The Rescue 
// by Diamond Sparkle 
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It was only the fact that Celestia was used to getting up early to raise the sun in her happy pod-world that gave her the strength to haul herself to her hooves. She and her parents and sister had a mile long trot to reach the apple fields. Whilst the Applejack Corporation would take anyone who could buck, the pay was low and the working conditions were anything but pleasant.

Applejack herself stood there, a horse-whip by her side and her cowboy hat upon her head. "Good to see you back, Celestia. Because of what you have been through at the hands of the Changelings for today only I'll halve your quota-you only have to bring me 150 baskets of apples today instead of 300 baskets. Now get to work."

Celestia knew what she had to do...she placed a basket under the nearest apple tree and bucked it. As she was not fully grown, it took a few hard kicks to make each tree give up it's apples. The first few times it was hard but not unpleasent work, but by the twenty-fifth tree her hooves were starting to ache and her mouth ached from dragging heavy baskets of apples, and there were still so many trees left to buck, so many heavy wickerwork baskets full of apples left to drag with her mouth, and as the sun grew higher it grew hot and so tempting to eat one of the apples and relax a little. Surely Applejack would not miss one apple...


There was a crack as Applejack lashed her rawhide whip across Celestia's cutie mark and Celestia let out a scream of pain. Dropping her whip Applejack screamed at Celestia. "You little thief! You little maggot! I ought to sack both you and your whole family on the spot for this sacrilege. From tomorrow I'll make you wear a muzzle at work, and since you won't be able to pull the basket with your muzzled mouth I'll make you buck 600 trees a day instead until your hooves feel like they're falling off. How did such a poor filly as you get a book cutie mark anyway? It should have been a thief cutie mark! Hard Ass, come over here."

A brown pony with a horsewhip in his mouth and a coiled horsewhip for a cutie mark trotted up, one of Applejack's Overseers.

"Guard this pony, watch her like a griffin, and if she slacks off or eats any apples,whip her until she gets back to work," Applejack told the stallion.

It was a long hard day for Celestia in which every time she tried to rest she was whipped on her back or butt or cutie mark. As an alicorn, for what she thought was two thousand years, she had been coddled, comforted  and always treated with respect.True, there had been moments of danger and of sadness-facing down Discord with Luna to bring sanity to Equestria, early battles and wars against griffins, zebras, and others, for Equestria in it's early days was not always at peace, banishing her sister to the moon, the Changeling attack, the loss through old age of ponies that she was close too, but these were few and far between. Now she was being whipped, insulted, treated like a slave, with the knowledge that there was nothing ahead but more misery and toil. She who had ruled so long at the top was now well and truly laid low.

At the end of the day each pony worker was given only a few bits for all their hard work, from a chest that was packed with them. Celestia thought So Applejack exists here, but she's a hard hearted tyrant...what are the others like? Rarity, Fluttershy,do they exist here? Are they any nicer then Applejack? I don't think I can bear much more of this. I have to get away and find an unspoiled Changeling hive, and then hope they decide to feed on my love rather then hurt or kill me. That way I can be an alicorn again.

As they walked home on sore hooves,the lash wounds on Celestia's back caked with dried blood, Iron Hoof struck Celestia hard on her head with his hoof. "You stupid filly! If we get sacked then we'll be homeless and you'll end up earning your bits as a whorse! I wish you had never been rescued from that Changling hive. Your changeling replacement was so much better then you.."

"I wish I was never rescued either," Celestia replied, glaring at him. "In that changeling pod I was an immortal alicorn! Applejack and her friends answered to me, and I lived in luxury...and now look at me! I hate bucking apples! I don't deserve this, I'm better then this." 

"Unless you want to end up on the streets as a homeless pony, you will do what you are told. You're not a Princess, not an alicorn, you're a little brat,and I'll hear no more of your nonsense. Yes, you may have earned your cutie mark in reading, but there is no money to send you to college when your schooling ends, and I doubt that they would accept you anyway." Iron Hoof replied, scowling at his daughter.

That night Celestia left a message written on a page of her schoolbook with her mouth. Don't look for me, I am off to find the Changelings. and slipped out into the night, taking with her only a full water-bottle carried in her mouth. I'm never going back there,never she thought.